A Life More Complete: MOGA Day

Kris: So we began our MOGA morning pretty early for the Individual Competition. It was a somewhat chilly morning but pretty nice weather for running through the woods. It was 30 caches in 3 hours and we had a pretty good run until about half way through we came upon a cache that was supposed to be hung in a tree. (Mark: Cache #23 and the hint was Christmas Ornament) Unfortunately after about 15 minutes of searching we found it under a bunch of leaves on the ground. We continued on and Mark pulled me to keep moving as my legs were DONE. After the Christmas ornament cache we ended up following along with another “team” of dad and daughter. And to put it nicely….he’s the type of dad you’d hear yelling obscenities at the umpires of a little league game. Way too competitive but maybe you can say it paid off since his daughter did get 1st place in MY age division. (I took second)

We had a short break for lunch and then had to get ready for the 2-man competition. There were quite a few other people down from MN to compete in the 2 or 4 man competitions as well. We started out pretty strong and managed FTF on 4 of the caches which worked out nicely because each one had a MOGA pathtag in them :) And we actually were following along with a 4 and 2 man team of army guys that were there with their sergeant. They were entertaining to follow since they were chanting along while running but not being true “geocachers” kept being amazed at how quickly we could find the containers. (Although we did find out that they didn’t get to decrypt the hints and I think that was our real advantage.) Mark: I was amused by the army guy in fatigues who kept saying "I wanna find one" About half way through the team competition, I was fighting a headache and we crossed a large area of tall brush to Cache #50 and I looked at Mark’s shirt and saw at first glance 3-4 wood ticks crawling on him. Further inspection and freaking out by me we found a number of deer ticks on both of us. We decided that this morning’s competition was great, we found half the caches and 4 pathtags so we were satisfied to call it a day. We found the shortest way out of the woods and proceeded straight to the tent and to the showers. (and yes we found MORE ticks during our pre-shower inspection) I swear I still get the creepy crawlies every time I think about it.

Mark: We did manage to find 15 of the 30 Team Competition caches.In the map below, the red square represents the Individual competition caches and the blue square is the Team competition caches.

After getting cleaned up we headed to dinner (and might I say MOGA supplied us with great food for the weekend) Mark: (I have to agree that the MOGA meal package was one of the best values of the entire weekend. Camping with out the need to bring any food or cooking equipment) where we managed to find quite a few people interested in trading pathtags. Mark: All we had to do was sit down with our blue pathtag drawstring bag and all of the traders came to us. After dinner was the awards ceremony and presentation of next year’s theme and location (Pirates at Rand Lake, Illinois) A handful of MN people got awards. Surprisingly not as many people that come to MOGA do the competition. I managed 2nd in the “Under 30” category (out of 3 :-P) Mark SHOULD have gotten 2nd (sorry honey) and I’ll let him explain….

Mark: Due to the problem with the "Christmas Ornament" cache in the Individual Competition the judges declared that it was missing and told teams that they did not need to find it. Unfortunately after that the cache was found, and I found it as well, but since they declared it as "missing" they were giving credit to all teams for the cache. Had they not declared the cache "missing" then I would have had all 30 finds and moved up to 2nd place since 1st and 2nd did not find the "Christmas Ornament" cache. Oh well....

Gilby4 and his 4-man team took 2nd and Pippin and Mary won the 2-man “Over 50”.

We would have liked to visit the Astronomy club’s setup at the campgrounds in the evening but after dinner we were wiped and headed straight to bed without passing go.

Sunday morning we still had to get up to an alarm for breakfast but luckily it was a bit later. We grabbed some breakfast and then went out to grab the Poker Run caches before lunch. Probably the easiest set of caches I’ve ever done. With the number of people that were going after these the past few days, the paths were worn in and you could just drive down the road and spot them, like this one:

(And yes that little pile of hay at the bottom of the birdfeeder is barely hiding and ammo can)

So now we just packed up, ate lunch and now blogging and planning one more cache grab “The Monolith” before we start the trek home.

Mark: Monolith was quite the hike back into the woods, probably about 3/4 of a mile but it was defiantly worth it and was the capstone of the weekend.